Introduction

When a theme is newly activated, the home page may appear jumbled, unstyled,  “broken” or out-of-sorts.  The following example is from CleanSale:

homepage_activation

The Solution

This is caused by the default WordPress widgets, or widgets from a previous theme setup, being set in the theme’s home page widget panels.  You may also need to select your Home Page Layout from the Theme Options menu. Go through your theme’s setup documentation to configure your widgets and setup the homepage properly.

To remove the existing widgets, go to Appearance  → Widgets and drag them out of the panels on the right side.